[EM] Fw: borda count

[Paul Kislanko]

 James Gilmour wrote, in part:

> But I agree with Steve's comment in his second message of 
> today.  Why on earth would anyone want to
> discuss Borda?.  It is fundamentally flawed and should be 
> consigned to the museum of electoral
> science, no matter what Don Saari may say.

As I have attempted to point out before, criteria such as "clone
independence" do not come into play when what is being discussed by a group
is "which of these four options should the group select as its primary?"
There's no way to "nominate clones", since there is no "nomination process"
involved that could introduce "clones."

This is why I draw a distinction between "Election Methods" and "Voting
Systems." As a Voting System, de Borda's approach has some very useful
properties with regards to quantifying a group "concensus". Would I use it
to elect people who would govern us? No. But are there places where it is
perfectly appropriate and better in some ways than other methods? I think
the answer to that is yes. In which case it should be understood and used
appropriately if it is used at all.